Of merry thieves and desperate rascals: Esenin

Translated from Russian by:Anton Yakovlev

A prominent twentieth-century Russian poet, Sergei Esenin (1895-1925) was one of the founders of the short-lived but influential Imaginist movement. From a peasant background, Esenin spent most of his adult life in Petrograd (now St. Petersburg), but his poetry focused on nature and rural life. In 1921 he married Isadora Duncan, but their marriage was stormy and short-lived. Esenin initially supported the Bolshevik regime but became disenchanted with it, criticizing the encroaching effects of Soviet industrialization. According to the official version, on the night of December 27, 1925, he hanged himself after writing his final poem in his own blood.

Sad streets,Piles of snow and frost.Desperate rascalsWith carts of cigarettes.Wanderers of dirty streets,Playthings of a wicked game,They’re all pickpockets,They’re all merry thieves.Nikitskaya is the turf of that gang;This one controls Tverskaya.With maudlin whistling,They stand around all day.They sneak into every denThen, catching a free moment,They read PinkertonOut loud over a beer.So what if the beer is bitter?They would even get drunk without it.They all dream of New York,San Francisco beckons them all.Then, grimly, they come outInto the cold once more,Desperate rascalsWith carts of cigarettes.

Goodbye, my friend, without a hand, without a word.Don’t be sad and don’t furrow your brow.In this life, dying isn’t news,Though living, of course, isn’t newer.

Born in Moscow, Russia, Anton Yakovlev is the author of poetry chapbooks Ordinary Impalers (Aldrich Press, 2017), The Ghost of Grant Wood (Finishing Line Press, 2015), and Neptune Court (The Operating System, 2015). His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Hopkins Review, Prelude, Measure, Amarillo Bay, The Stockholm Review of Literature, and elsewhere. His book of translations of poetry by Sergei Esenin is forthcoming from Sensitive Skin Books in 2017.